Geert's Blog:net critique
**
Chat Oliver Gassner & Geert Lovink
**
Geert sent me a text on his view of the German blogosphere, asking me to comment. We chatted instead. Thuis is an almost unedited Chatlog. I just removed timestamps, (some of the) typos and very rarely rearragned the lines of the chat where the conversation was crossing. (But not in all cases.)
I am mainly blogging this to collect your ideas. Geert also speaks German but we chatted in English ;) So your German comments are also welcome.
Geert wrote:
Few might have noticed, but the German passion for blogging is remarkably low. With 62 out of 98 million German speaking users online (in November 2007), realistic estimations of the German blogosphere do not exceed the half a million mark.Blogcensus. de counts all active German blogs, relying on manual inspection. Their February 2008 estimate was 204.500 active blogs, an active blog defined as at least a post every six months.[i] John Yunker of Byte Level Research thinks this is way too low. The German magazine Focus claims to have counted 1.1 million German blogs, which, according to Yunker, is again too high. Yunker: “Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere counted 50 millions blogs in 2006 and claims that app. 1% of blog posts were in German. With the bold assumption that the blogging frequency is the same globally, this would result in approximately 500.000 blogs in German. This seems to me to be a more realistic estimate, in line with otherguesstimates of other sources.”[ii] And Yunker concludes: “In absolute and relative numbers the German blogosphere is very, very small.”
What makes blog software so unattractive? The answer to this question should tell us something about the character of blogs, not about the ethnographic ‘Volksart’ of some continental Europeans. Could it be explained from a collective distrust to provide authorities with personal data such as profiles, music preferences and reading lists? Do blogs indeed invite the individual to say more than he or she wants? Is it really that much more save to be part of a larger group inside online forums? Should Internet users participate in the cult of the celebrity, beef up his or her biography, pretending they are an Ich-AG, as it is called in German (I Ltd.).

[i]http://blog.blogcensus.de/2008/02/29/blogcensus-report-februar-2008/.
[ii]http://www.globalbydesign.com/blog/2007/12/05/marketing-opportunities-in-the-german-blogosphere/
Oliver Gassner : I think you hit the right spot. There is also a distrust for public discourse, politically and privately. "Was würden die Nachbarn denken?" on the one hand. And: Revolutions in Germany failed (ok except 1989 ,) )
Geert Lovink : that distrust is so interesting
Oliver Gassner : but both parts of Germany have te experience, that discussing both private and political issues openly is a bad idea
Oliver Gassner : I think it stems from experience
Oliver Gassner : I also talked about this with Loic Le Meur, sec
Geert Lovink : it is the bankruptcy of the whole idea of Öffentlichkeit, no?
Oliver Gassner : hm
Geert Lovink : yes i included him in the piece on the french blogosphere
Oliver Gassner : It might mean something different in 'colloquial' German (not Sociological)
Geert Lovink : would it be possible for you to answer in email
Geert Lovink : i can quote the chat, of course, no problem
Oliver Gassner : Actually I am better in a dialogue ;)
Geert Lovink : fine, then i will save this
Oliver Gassner : (I thought about a new blog form which is mainly a dialogue, but that is just an idea)
Geert Lovink : but not a shoutbox?
Oliver Gassner : I think the 'colloquial' concept of 'Öffentlichkeit' in Germany is, that it is something that is the "Zuständigkeit" of professionals, like Journalists and Politicians
Geert Lovink : not twitter
Geert Lovink : I see. Öffentlichkeit is not for ordinary people
Oliver Gassner : no, imagine a blog where a 'post' is a chat between 2 people, not so much an article but a 'real' conversation
Oliver Gassner : Yep that seems to be the underlying cultural code that leads to this 'Zurückhaltung'. (Normally English words come to me easily)
Geert Lovink : indeed. posting a chat, somewhat like twitter as dialogue?
Oliver Gassner : "Making noise" was dangerous in 'Vormärz', 1933-1945, 1945-1989 in Eastern Germany.
Geert Lovink : hesitation
Oliver Gassner : That would be "Zögern", Zurückhaltung is something you do actively. And it is NOT understatement.
Oliver Gassner : It is a kind of discipline you practice 'in the public'
Geert Lovink : but then there is the cult of the plenum
Geert Lovink : we from Holland think that is very German
Oliver Gassner : Compare: in the public (the res publica) and 'Öffentlichkeit' (open-ness', but not really. 'offen' in German has this air of being unprotected.
Geert Lovink : it is something we cannot achieve, to discuss together with a group
Oliver Gassner : Plenum? meaning?
Geert Lovink : sometimes even with 200 people in a room
Geert Lovink : plenum
Oliver Gassner : I think it is ingrained in Germany thought (non-withstanding 'empfindsamkeit' as a literary movement) that 'the public' or 'the state' is something subjected to reason and argumentation.
Geert Lovink : it is a kind of culture of debating together
Geert Lovink : i see
Oliver Gassner : Creativity and emotion are not for the public space.
Geert Lovink : but maybe i was referring more to experiences in social movements
Geert Lovink : i can see that the realm of the public is too close to that of the state
Oliver Gassner : I think this is also the way we raise our kids. (And how we raise our kids even if we consider us 'liberals'.)
Geert Lovink : and that there are too few save informal spaces for people
Geert Lovink : but how about rhetoric then?
Oliver Gassner : Yeah, there is this saying that if you have 3 Germans on a lonely island they found a 'Skatverein'. And 'Verein' is a legal form of grouping in Germany that is tax exempt. (Skat is a common card game you can play w/ only 3 people.)
Geert Lovink : the verein is not informal, it is formal again...
Oliver Gassner : My impression is that explicitely rhetoric is not so much a part of 'Bildung' (which also has different notions to me than 'education'.
Oliver Gassner : But then again 'arguing' in written form is taught in school extensively and new we even have debating clubs. But that is a 'mode' (is the sense of fashion) imported from Britain, I guess.
Oliver Gassner : Yep. IF you want to be e.g. a charitable non-profit, you NEED to be a Verein, or nobody will trust you. A verein is registred at the local court and tax office.
Geert Lovink : but blogging and Internet doesn't need all that
Oliver Gassner : http://netzstimmen.blogg.de/eintrag.php?id=13 This is my interview with Loic were we also muse about F-D differences
Geert Lovink : excellent!
Oliver Gassner : Well as a blogger you need to publish an 'Impressum' and you might pay quite a lot of cash if you do not disclose name, adress and phone number.
Oliver Gassner : Even if you have a private blog - I think. (You would need to ask a German media lawyer)
Geert Lovink : to whom? if you use blogger?
Oliver Gassner : It's a little like in China where you have to register a blog ;)
Oliver Gassner : You need to publish name, address etc ON the blog.
Oliver Gassner : Of course you can try to blog anonymously. But then again you might be found out.
Geert Lovink : i see, but i never see that on German blogs
Geert Lovink : it is a law that few people heard of?
Oliver Gassner : 'Legally' you need to be identifiable if you publish.
Geert Lovink : but only inside Germany, right?
Oliver Gassner : You see it quite a lot, specially on the top 100 blogs, you 'are allowed to' also link to it under the name if 'Kontakt'
Geert Lovink : so what then constitutes blogging inside germany? the IP address?
Oliver Gassner : HM, if you LIVE inside germany I think it makes little difference where the data is resting.
Oliver Gassner : Your residence.
Geert Lovink : because blogger in germany is one of the most used services
Oliver Gassner : I even imagine that, if you write on your blog that "Auschwitz was a holiday camp" and then travel to Germany, well...
Geert Lovink : and these data are hosted in the USA
Oliver Gassner : You might be a neighbor of Gary Lauck then...
Geert Lovink : OK so that silences people saying what they think
Oliver Gassner : Where the data is hosted is of little importance to German law, if I understand correctly. Causethe data can be viewed in *.de and if you are a resident or visitor...
Oliver Gassner : Well it prevents them from saying anything that might make them liable.
Oliver Gassner : I was even told by companies that they cannot use wikipedia 'because of copyright issues'. I would not know what exactly these issues are.
Geert Lovink : sure, but as i understand it also stops them, somehow, from blogging in the first place
Oliver Gassner : The major concern of German companies wen using 'social web' media are legal ones.
Geert Lovink : a culture of fear for lawyers?
Oliver Gassner : Well, it's probably not the legal issues that stop the. I think it's the general culture that ALSO shows itself in the legal constructs.
Oliver Gassner : Lawyers live on fear in Geramny, yep.
Oliver Gassner : fear
Geert Lovink : but how about the users side? StudiVZ is not about breaking the law...
Oliver Gassner : I think specially younger people lack the idea that they are identifiable.
Geert Lovink : but that's good or naive?
Oliver Gassner : A manger of StudiVZ hinted at the fact that they might be forced or willing or OTOH to report illegal behavior to the police. and because if "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" you will be able to identify the originator of a utterance on the web for I think 5 years.
Oliver Gassner : I adhere to the philosophy of Wau Holland who said that it is important to archive utterances on the web.
Geert Lovink : that's the case everywhere, yes, also here.
Oliver Gassner : I think: for reasons of ehm credibility?
Oliver Gassner : I think this is European law.
Geert Lovink : yes
Geert Lovink : but still responses of people are different to these laws
Oliver Gassner : I don't think users are afraid of the law.I think they are just 'culturally shy' because of their upbringing and the cultural experience in Germany regarding public political utterances.
Geert Lovink : people say that is is easier in Germany to contribute to a web forum
Oliver Gassner : in what respect?
Oliver Gassner : easier than blogging?
Geert Lovink : maybe not having this vip thing of the Pressegesetz
Oliver Gassner : I think Germans feel safer in groups.
Oliver Gassner : Yep.
Geert Lovink : but that frustrates the emergence of a rich and diverse blog culture
Oliver Gassner : Forums are really big in germany. If you get your blog high in traffic he traffic usually comes from a forum ,)
Geert Lovink : so interesting
Oliver Gassner : If you want to make cash with advertising: open a forum.
Geert Lovink : where can i find such forums?
Oliver Gassner : just type forum and any topic.
Geert Lovink : here they are unknown
Geert Lovink : i will try!
Oliver Gassner : I would not know what the biggest ones are, but I think there are forums on EVERY topic
Oliver Gassner : I heard a talk yesterday by the founder of KWICK, I liveblogged it
Geert Lovink : and those who host it have less trouble with lawyers and the law?
Oliver Gassner : I think they are one of the 5 biggest communities in germany
Oliver Gassner : 1,5 Million users ir so, 1,1
Geert Lovink : amazing, yes
Geert Lovink : kwick is the magazine, right?
Oliver Gassner : Ehm, no. They are sometimes actually moving the forums out of the country, so they find somone in Austria to be the 'host' of the forum.
Oliver Gassner : happened ti Gulli
Geert Lovink : i see
Oliver Gassner : kwick HAS an online mag, Quick is the print mag. Different ;)
Oliver Gassner : Gulli is maybe interesting, AFAIK it is both a forum and a log, but I might be wrong.
Oliver Gassner : Bu8t forums are also often attacked by lawyers. but then only ONE pseron is in (pardon me) deep shit.
Oliver Gassner : usually the suers of the forum are 'safe'.
Oliver Gassner : (at least there is less news about them being sued.)
Geert Lovink : ok i got it, kwick.de
Oliver Gassner : It is crazy. while providers hae to save IP data for 5 years legally a court rules that it might be illegal to have a serverlog.
Oliver Gassner : yep
Oliver Gassner : the link to the profile of the maker is at the end of the article
Oliver Gassner : I was also thinking of registring and having a look ;)
Oliver Gassner : as to forums they are used by clans of lan-party-players etc.
Oliver Gassner : by many many groups
Geert Lovink : i looked at gulli
Geert Lovink : sorry i was a bit behind
Oliver Gassner : np
Oliver Gassner : maybe this also 'binds' the blogging power of ppl
Geert Lovink : i understand
Oliver Gassner : BTW the standard question you get in Geramny is 'ah, and in what way is a blog different from a forum'?
Oliver Gassner : this is part of an e-mal I wrote to a customer about that:
Oliver Gassner : http://blog.oliver-gassner.de/archives/2232-Blog-vs.-Forum,-Folge-328.html
Geert Lovink : that is really different elsewhere
Geert Lovink : is it the urge to be social and not present yourself as a unique individual?
Oliver Gassner : Hm, interesting question.
Oliver Gassner : I think ppl present them as individuals in Forums.
Oliver Gassner : But they move in a group, somewhat
Oliver Gassner : Writing in a forum means: You audience is already there, you are 'already' part of it.
Geert Lovink : and a forum is not a social networking site, right?
Oliver Gassner : There are also 'ranks' in Forums, so that you can see who the experienced users are.
Geert Lovink : it is not about your profile, your friends and second degree networks...
Oliver Gassner : nope, you have private messages but you have no social graph. (kwick has a social graph now, but I think at some point it did not.)
Oliver Gassner : Its mainly about content and discourse
Geert Lovink : i see, but not that repressive in terms of the state and lawyers?
Oliver Gassner : also abut questions you can ask. If you ask a question on a blog this only works if you have many readers ;)
Oliver Gassner : Yep, the individual in a forum is 'safer' than a blogger. (Specially a blogger with his or her own domain...)
Geert Lovink : yes otherwise you're in the long tail and struggle with zero comments, sure
Oliver Gassner : yep.
Geert Lovink : that's maybe less of a problem in the forum. you can see that people are indeed there.
Oliver Gassner : You even have 'presence' lists in Forums, so you know who has the browser open. Its a little like proto-twitter ;)
Geert Lovink : i have to pick up my son from school, he is six
Oliver Gassner : And as I said there is not the sense of 'bening alone' taht you have in a blog.
Geert Lovink : i will save the chat and send you the things i used
Oliver Gassner : I have seen groups of school pals open Blogs after school was over.
Oliver Gassner : To stay in contact. But the groups was first, then came the blog.
Geert Lovink : loneliness, right, electronic solitude
Oliver Gassner : Great.
Oliver Gassner : I am also wondering if I could just blog this exchange ;)
Geert Lovink : thanks a lot, oliver!
Oliver Gassner : maybe even in raw form
Geert Lovink : but maybe edit the English then.. i am fine with that
Oliver Gassner : OK I'll edit my mistakes or anything obvious I see.
Geert Lovink : i mean the typos
Oliver Gassner : If there are replies they will sure be interesting ;)
Oliver Gassner : Yep.
Geert Lovink : indeed!
Oliver Gassner : (I am famous for my typos ;) )
Geert Lovink : bye!
Oliver Gassner : OK, thanks for the 'stimulus' any time again ;)
Oliver Gassner : bye
**
Chat Oliver Gassner & Geert Lovink
**
Geert sent me a text on his view of the German blogosphere, asking me to comment. We chatted instead. Thuis is an almost unedited Chatlog. I just removed timestamps, (some of the) typos and very rarely rearragned the lines of the chat where the conversation was crossing. (But not in all cases.)
I am mainly blogging this to collect your ideas. Geert also speaks German but we chatted in English ;) So your German comments are also welcome.
Geert wrote:
Few might have noticed, but the German passion for blogging is remarkably low. With 62 out of 98 million German speaking users online (in November 2007), realistic estimations of the German blogosphere do not exceed the half a million mark.Blogcensus. de counts all active German blogs, relying on manual inspection. Their February 2008 estimate was 204.500 active blogs, an active blog defined as at least a post every six months.[i] John Yunker of Byte Level Research thinks this is way too low. The German magazine Focus claims to have counted 1.1 million German blogs, which, according to Yunker, is again too high. Yunker: “Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere counted 50 millions blogs in 2006 and claims that app. 1% of blog posts were in German. With the bold assumption that the blogging frequency is the same globally, this would result in approximately 500.000 blogs in German. This seems to me to be a more realistic estimate, in line with otherguesstimates of other sources.”[ii] And Yunker concludes: “In absolute and relative numbers the German blogosphere is very, very small.”
What makes blog software so unattractive? The answer to this question should tell us something about the character of blogs, not about the ethnographic ‘Volksart’ of some continental Europeans. Could it be explained from a collective distrust to provide authorities with personal data such as profiles, music preferences and reading lists? Do blogs indeed invite the individual to say more than he or she wants? Is it really that much more save to be part of a larger group inside online forums? Should Internet users participate in the cult of the celebrity, beef up his or her biography, pretending they are an Ich-AG, as it is called in German (I Ltd.).

[i]http://blog.blogcensus.de/2008/02/29/blogcensus-report-februar-2008/.
[ii]http://www.globalbydesign.com/blog/2007/12/05/marketing-opportunities-in-the-german-blogosphere/
Oliver Gassner : I think you hit the right spot. There is also a distrust for public discourse, politically and privately. "Was würden die Nachbarn denken?" on the one hand. And: Revolutions in Germany failed (ok except 1989 ,) )
Geert Lovink : that distrust is so interesting
Oliver Gassner : but both parts of Germany have te experience, that discussing both private and political issues openly is a bad idea
Oliver Gassner : I think it stems from experience
Oliver Gassner : I also talked about this with Loic Le Meur, sec
Geert Lovink : it is the bankruptcy of the whole idea of Öffentlichkeit, no?
Oliver Gassner : hm
Geert Lovink : yes i included him in the piece on the french blogosphere
Oliver Gassner : It might mean something different in 'colloquial' German (not Sociological)
Geert Lovink : would it be possible for you to answer in email
Geert Lovink : i can quote the chat, of course, no problem
Oliver Gassner : Actually I am better in a dialogue ;)
Geert Lovink : fine, then i will save this
Oliver Gassner : (I thought about a new blog form which is mainly a dialogue, but that is just an idea)
Geert Lovink : but not a shoutbox?
Oliver Gassner : I think the 'colloquial' concept of 'Öffentlichkeit' in Germany is, that it is something that is the "Zuständigkeit" of professionals, like Journalists and Politicians
Geert Lovink : not twitter
Geert Lovink : I see. Öffentlichkeit is not for ordinary people
Oliver Gassner : no, imagine a blog where a 'post' is a chat between 2 people, not so much an article but a 'real' conversation
Oliver Gassner : Yep that seems to be the underlying cultural code that leads to this 'Zurückhaltung'. (Normally English words come to me easily)
Geert Lovink : indeed. posting a chat, somewhat like twitter as dialogue?
Oliver Gassner : "Making noise" was dangerous in 'Vormärz', 1933-1945, 1945-1989 in Eastern Germany.
Geert Lovink : hesitation
Oliver Gassner : That would be "Zögern", Zurückhaltung is something you do actively. And it is NOT understatement.
Oliver Gassner : It is a kind of discipline you practice 'in the public'
Geert Lovink : but then there is the cult of the plenum
Geert Lovink : we from Holland think that is very German
Oliver Gassner : Compare: in the public (the res publica) and 'Öffentlichkeit' (open-ness', but not really. 'offen' in German has this air of being unprotected.
Geert Lovink : it is something we cannot achieve, to discuss together with a group
Oliver Gassner : Plenum? meaning?
Geert Lovink : sometimes even with 200 people in a room
Geert Lovink : plenum
Oliver Gassner : I think it is ingrained in Germany thought (non-withstanding 'empfindsamkeit' as a literary movement) that 'the public' or 'the state' is something subjected to reason and argumentation.
Geert Lovink : it is a kind of culture of debating together
Geert Lovink : i see
Oliver Gassner : Creativity and emotion are not for the public space.
Geert Lovink : but maybe i was referring more to experiences in social movements
Geert Lovink : i can see that the realm of the public is too close to that of the state
Oliver Gassner : I think this is also the way we raise our kids. (And how we raise our kids even if we consider us 'liberals'.)
Geert Lovink : and that there are too few save informal spaces for people
Geert Lovink : but how about rhetoric then?
Oliver Gassner : Yeah, there is this saying that if you have 3 Germans on a lonely island they found a 'Skatverein'. And 'Verein' is a legal form of grouping in Germany that is tax exempt. (Skat is a common card game you can play w/ only 3 people.)
Geert Lovink : the verein is not informal, it is formal again...
Oliver Gassner : My impression is that explicitely rhetoric is not so much a part of 'Bildung' (which also has different notions to me than 'education'.
Oliver Gassner : But then again 'arguing' in written form is taught in school extensively and new we even have debating clubs. But that is a 'mode' (is the sense of fashion) imported from Britain, I guess.
Oliver Gassner : Yep. IF you want to be e.g. a charitable non-profit, you NEED to be a Verein, or nobody will trust you. A verein is registred at the local court and tax office.
Geert Lovink : but blogging and Internet doesn't need all that
Oliver Gassner : http://netzstimmen.blogg.de/eintrag.php?id=13 This is my interview with Loic were we also muse about F-D differences
Geert Lovink : excellent!
Oliver Gassner : Well as a blogger you need to publish an 'Impressum' and you might pay quite a lot of cash if you do not disclose name, adress and phone number.
Oliver Gassner : Even if you have a private blog - I think. (You would need to ask a German media lawyer)
Geert Lovink : to whom? if you use blogger?
Oliver Gassner : It's a little like in China where you have to register a blog ;)
Oliver Gassner : You need to publish name, address etc ON the blog.
Oliver Gassner : Of course you can try to blog anonymously. But then again you might be found out.
Geert Lovink : i see, but i never see that on German blogs
Geert Lovink : it is a law that few people heard of?
Oliver Gassner : 'Legally' you need to be identifiable if you publish.
Geert Lovink : but only inside Germany, right?
Oliver Gassner : You see it quite a lot, specially on the top 100 blogs, you 'are allowed to' also link to it under the name if 'Kontakt'
Geert Lovink : so what then constitutes blogging inside germany? the IP address?
Oliver Gassner : HM, if you LIVE inside germany I think it makes little difference where the data is resting.
Oliver Gassner : Your residence.
Geert Lovink : because blogger in germany is one of the most used services
Oliver Gassner : I even imagine that, if you write on your blog that "Auschwitz was a holiday camp" and then travel to Germany, well...
Geert Lovink : and these data are hosted in the USA
Oliver Gassner : You might be a neighbor of Gary Lauck then...
Geert Lovink : OK so that silences people saying what they think
Oliver Gassner : Where the data is hosted is of little importance to German law, if I understand correctly. Causethe data can be viewed in *.de and if you are a resident or visitor...
Oliver Gassner : Well it prevents them from saying anything that might make them liable.
Oliver Gassner : I was even told by companies that they cannot use wikipedia 'because of copyright issues'. I would not know what exactly these issues are.
Geert Lovink : sure, but as i understand it also stops them, somehow, from blogging in the first place
Oliver Gassner : The major concern of German companies wen using 'social web' media are legal ones.
Geert Lovink : a culture of fear for lawyers?
Oliver Gassner : Well, it's probably not the legal issues that stop the. I think it's the general culture that ALSO shows itself in the legal constructs.
Oliver Gassner : Lawyers live on fear in Geramny, yep.
Oliver Gassner : fear
Geert Lovink : but how about the users side? StudiVZ is not about breaking the law...
Oliver Gassner : I think specially younger people lack the idea that they are identifiable.
Geert Lovink : but that's good or naive?
Oliver Gassner : A manger of StudiVZ hinted at the fact that they might be forced or willing or OTOH to report illegal behavior to the police. and because if "Vorratsdatenspeicherung" you will be able to identify the originator of a utterance on the web for I think 5 years.
Oliver Gassner : I adhere to the philosophy of Wau Holland who said that it is important to archive utterances on the web.
Geert Lovink : that's the case everywhere, yes, also here.
Oliver Gassner : I think: for reasons of ehm credibility?
Oliver Gassner : I think this is European law.
Geert Lovink : yes
Geert Lovink : but still responses of people are different to these laws
Oliver Gassner : I don't think users are afraid of the law.I think they are just 'culturally shy' because of their upbringing and the cultural experience in Germany regarding public political utterances.
Geert Lovink : people say that is is easier in Germany to contribute to a web forum
Oliver Gassner : in what respect?
Oliver Gassner : easier than blogging?
Geert Lovink : maybe not having this vip thing of the Pressegesetz
Oliver Gassner : I think Germans feel safer in groups.
Oliver Gassner : Yep.
Geert Lovink : but that frustrates the emergence of a rich and diverse blog culture
Oliver Gassner : Forums are really big in germany. If you get your blog high in traffic he traffic usually comes from a forum ,)
Geert Lovink : so interesting
Oliver Gassner : If you want to make cash with advertising: open a forum.
Geert Lovink : where can i find such forums?
Oliver Gassner : just type forum and any topic.
Geert Lovink : here they are unknown
Geert Lovink : i will try!
Oliver Gassner : I would not know what the biggest ones are, but I think there are forums on EVERY topic
Oliver Gassner : I heard a talk yesterday by the founder of KWICK, I liveblogged it
Geert Lovink : and those who host it have less trouble with lawyers and the law?
Oliver Gassner : I think they are one of the 5 biggest communities in germany
Oliver Gassner : 1,5 Million users ir so, 1,1
Geert Lovink : amazing, yes
Geert Lovink : kwick is the magazine, right?
Oliver Gassner : Ehm, no. They are sometimes actually moving the forums out of the country, so they find somone in Austria to be the 'host' of the forum.
Oliver Gassner : happened ti Gulli
Geert Lovink : i see
Oliver Gassner : kwick HAS an online mag, Quick is the print mag. Different ;)
Oliver Gassner : Gulli is maybe interesting, AFAIK it is both a forum and a log, but I might be wrong.
Oliver Gassner : Bu8t forums are also often attacked by lawyers. but then only ONE pseron is in (pardon me) deep shit.
Oliver Gassner : usually the suers of the forum are 'safe'.
Oliver Gassner : (at least there is less news about them being sued.)
Geert Lovink : ok i got it, kwick.de
Oliver Gassner : It is crazy. while providers hae to save IP data for 5 years legally a court rules that it might be illegal to have a serverlog.
Oliver Gassner : yep
Oliver Gassner : the link to the profile of the maker is at the end of the article
Oliver Gassner : I was also thinking of registring and having a look ;)
Oliver Gassner : as to forums they are used by clans of lan-party-players etc.
Oliver Gassner : by many many groups
Geert Lovink : i looked at gulli
Geert Lovink : sorry i was a bit behind
Oliver Gassner : np
Oliver Gassner : maybe this also 'binds' the blogging power of ppl
Geert Lovink : i understand
Oliver Gassner : BTW the standard question you get in Geramny is 'ah, and in what way is a blog different from a forum'?
Oliver Gassner : this is part of an e-mal I wrote to a customer about that:
Oliver Gassner : http://blog.oliver-gassner.de/archives/2232-Blog-vs.-Forum,-Folge-328.html
Geert Lovink : that is really different elsewhere
Geert Lovink : is it the urge to be social and not present yourself as a unique individual?
Oliver Gassner : Hm, interesting question.
Oliver Gassner : I think ppl present them as individuals in Forums.
Oliver Gassner : But they move in a group, somewhat
Oliver Gassner : Writing in a forum means: You audience is already there, you are 'already' part of it.
Geert Lovink : and a forum is not a social networking site, right?
Oliver Gassner : There are also 'ranks' in Forums, so that you can see who the experienced users are.
Geert Lovink : it is not about your profile, your friends and second degree networks...
Oliver Gassner : nope, you have private messages but you have no social graph. (kwick has a social graph now, but I think at some point it did not.)
Oliver Gassner : Its mainly about content and discourse
Geert Lovink : i see, but not that repressive in terms of the state and lawyers?
Oliver Gassner : also abut questions you can ask. If you ask a question on a blog this only works if you have many readers ;)
Oliver Gassner : Yep, the individual in a forum is 'safer' than a blogger. (Specially a blogger with his or her own domain...)
Geert Lovink : yes otherwise you're in the long tail and struggle with zero comments, sure
Oliver Gassner : yep.
Geert Lovink : that's maybe less of a problem in the forum. you can see that people are indeed there.
Oliver Gassner : You even have 'presence' lists in Forums, so you know who has the browser open. Its a little like proto-twitter ;)
Geert Lovink : i have to pick up my son from school, he is six
Oliver Gassner : And as I said there is not the sense of 'bening alone' taht you have in a blog.
Geert Lovink : i will save the chat and send you the things i used
Oliver Gassner : I have seen groups of school pals open Blogs after school was over.
Oliver Gassner : To stay in contact. But the groups was first, then came the blog.
Geert Lovink : loneliness, right, electronic solitude
Oliver Gassner : Great.
Oliver Gassner : I am also wondering if I could just blog this exchange ;)
Geert Lovink : thanks a lot, oliver!
Oliver Gassner : maybe even in raw form
Geert Lovink : but maybe edit the English then.. i am fine with that
Oliver Gassner : OK I'll edit my mistakes or anything obvious I see.
Geert Lovink : i mean the typos
Oliver Gassner : If there are replies they will sure be interesting ;)
Oliver Gassner : Yep.
Geert Lovink : indeed!
Oliver Gassner : (I am famous for my typos ;) )
Geert Lovink : bye!
Oliver Gassner : OK, thanks for the 'stimulus' any time again ;)
Oliver Gassner : bye
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